Author's Comments: Wow, another week has passed already? Jeez...at least that means a chapter upload! Hope you enjoy reading!
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts or any of the lines from the game (as noted with a *). I own Imani and Aden.
A pain greater than that swirling in my body clutches my chest, right where I think my heart is supposed to be. Tendrils writhe aimlessly for something to grasp. More tears blur my eyes and I gasp for my breath.
I slowly shake my head. This picture is wrong. I'm not supposed to be alone. I'm supposed to be surrounded by the faces of my friends…Aden should be in this picture. Aden and Sora and Riku and Axel and all my friends are supposed to be here. Why am I alone? Why aren't they here?
A tear trickles down my cheek as a voice in my head answers, Because they're in my heart.
But I have memories of them. I've remembered so much about them.
But without the heart, the power of those memories diminishes tremendously. In the same way, without memories, the heart can't draw forth the strength and the will to truly live.
The words echo in my ears, breathing renewed power into my body and banishing the pain that confined me. With my free hand I wipe the wetness from my cheeks. My other hand tightens its grip on my katana and I exhale long and loud. I said I'd fix this and I will.
"Rise," a low voice commands, "agents of darkness."
A loud sucking vortex noise erupts. Stickiness wells up in the pit of my stomach and yellow and red explode from the darkness surrounding me. Gusts of air blast me at all angles, chilling my damp skin and whipping my hair.
When the sucking noise ceases, I gaze wide-eyed at the sea of yellow orbs and red slits. There are so many…Things and Unversed…and they're what are standing between me and him.
"Imani! Fight!"
My katana clinks softly as I raise it before me, gripping it with my other hand and crouching slightly. I shoot a final look at the girl trapped in her nightmare in the picture beneath my feet before glaring at the sea. "I won't fail," I tell her.
"Empty words."
Warm breath blows past my ear. The hairs on the back of my neck rise on end at the voice directly behind me. I can practically feel his smirk burning into my back.
"You will choke on those words once I'm through with you," he whispers.
I whirl on my heels and slash behind me but all I find is thin air. The slice of my blade ruptures the silence like a shotgun signaling the start of a race. Immediately the yellow orbs and red slits charge forth towards me, stampeding over the stained-glass circle.
And there, in the far distance, stands Xemnas.
"FIGHT, Imani!"
The monsters disappear in clouds of miasma as I slash and swipe at them. I keep having to stop every two steps to fight more monsters. The lack of light glimmering off the blade of my katana isn't helping, either. My head starts clouding up with dizziness as I advance further towards Xemnas.
Strike, I command.
Bolts of lightning crash down around me as I move, sizzling some of the Things and Unversed into nonexistence and throwing light to my blade to kill some of my wooziness. Though my pace has sped up to six steps for every pause to fight, Xemans is still too far out of reach. There has to be a better way to get to him…
Icy claws tickle my ankle. As I swipe low to get rid of the Thing, a pair of distressed blue eyes beneath my feet catches my attention and my own widen. That's Sora—
A shout rips through my throat as something sharp digs into my shoulder. I furiously slash around me to reveal more of the face below me. In seconds I've uncovered Sora's face and soon I've found Riku and Zexion…and Kairi…and the king…
I'm standing on the stained-glass circle I first found when I lost everything.
My mind reels as I fight to uncover more of the circle. If the stained-glass circle with me in it is relative to what's really happening with me, then this stained-glass circle is probably relative to what's going on, too. There's something wrong with this picture, too, but what? The downcast faces of my friends stare back at me pleadingly and Xemnas lies in the middle of it all with such an eerie calmness about him and he's totally oblivious to the turmoil surrounding him—
That's it! He's what's wrong with this picture!
With more vigor I fight off the monsters, glancing down to search for Xemnas' sleeping image. My arms are beginning to ache and my side hurts and the monsters are slicing my clothes and scratching my ankles and digging into my limbs but I have to ignore the stinging because I have to get to him I have to get to him—
I shift my grip on the katana, raise my arms above my head, aim the tip, and thrust down into Xemnas' image right where his heart would be.
A roar erupts and the glass beneath me shatters. Shards fly up all around me, forcing me to shield my face with my arms. Miasma ghosts over my skin as I freefall into the abyss.
"Very good," a voice murmurs behind me suddenly, sending a shiver down my spine. "Let's see how well your emotions will let you fare."
My feet land on solid ground far more gently than I'd anticipated. It's almost startling…but not as startling as the voice that suddenly calls out.
"You don't look like you're half the hero the others were.*"
I whip my head up from my arms and toward the voice. Standing on a ledge against the far wall of the room is a snickering Xigbar. How did he get here?
Xigbar barks out a laugh at my incredulous gawking face. "Surprised, poppet? I didn't think you'd be. Didn't you remember that your greatest weapon was your memory?"
A conversation with Master Yen Sid vaguely plays in my head as I try to comprehend everything. This isn't Xigbar standing in front of me—this is Xemnas. He's portraying Xigbar using the memory of the sniper.
"Let games begin!"
Xigbar—I mean, Xemnas swipes his arms across his chest, bringing out an intricate gun in each hand. He crouches on one knee with a laugh, cocking the guns and aiming…at me.
Cursing under my breath, I roll out of the way just as he fires several bullets. How do I get him down here where I can reach? What will get him to come down?
I stumble over my feet and take a moment to regain my balance—a moment he uses to fire more bullets at me. On instinct I stop and swing my katana like a baseball bat, sending them back to the shooter's gun. His frustrated growl reverberates off the walls as he stands on his feet and—
Wait. Where'd he go?
"He-e-eads up!"
Hot bullets sink into my back and shoulder. A gust of wind blows behind me and suddenly the man appears upside-down in midair, his guns aimed and a smirk on his scarred face. I dash out of the way and barely miss the bullets but he keeps teleporting and firing and my skin sizzles with pain. There has to be a time when he runs out of bullets and he has to—
"Reload," he mutters, pausing and fiddling with his guns.
Ignoring my burned skin, I leap into the air and thrash at him, relishing his grunts of pain with each landed slice. Too soon he's firing and teleporting again, forcing me to jump and dash to avoid getting hit. Several times the cycle repeats and I slowly wear him down until he warps to the middle of the floor, standing upright.
"Let's see how you dance!*" he shouts.
Suddenly the floor space shrinks into a small square. He spins in a circle, leaps from one corner to the other, and levitates above my head while firing countless bullets rapidly. No matter how high I jump or how quickly I roll out of the way, they all follow me and stab my body at once, raining down mercilessly and trapping me in a prison cell of pain.
"C'mon, Maxiin! You can do better than that!"
He's right. I can do better than this.
His taunting voice grates my ears and sharpens my resolve. When the storm of bullets finally ceases, I run directly beneath him, snag his wrist, and hold on for dear life. At that moment, he begins to disappear and inadvertently pulls me along into a space chasm. Pressure squeezes me at all angles, tightening my grip on him.
His eye widens. "What the—"
I fight against the thick pressure pushing against my arm to thread the blade of my katana through both guns, yank them from his grasp, chuck them to the side, and thrust the blade into him. He howls in pain, the sound delayed because of the space pressure until suddenly the space relinquishes. The blood rushes through my veins and to my head like a river that's free from the dam, mixing in quite nicely with the triumph throbbing in my limbs.
Xigbar's scarred face melts into smooth, tanned skin. His hair escapes from its ponytail and the patch covering one eye slips away. "We've only just begun, Maxiin," Xemnas declares quietly, withdrawing the blade from his chest without flinching.
His large hand—when did it get so big?—grabs my wrist and twists hard, wrenching a surprised cry from me. With only the hand around my wrist, he throws me down as if I'm a ragdoll. My burned back slams into solid marble with such force that I'm positive I cracked my shoulder blade and a rib or two.
I've barely enough time to breathe or moan in pain as I spot a large man descending directly above me with his arms pulled over his head and a tomahawk poised to strike. I scramble to my feet as best I can but I only manage to take a few steps away before the ground flies up below me in a rising mountain of earth. My knees buckle and my spine wobbles as I soar to the other side of the circular courtyard and nearly fall off the edge.
Each breath causes a tear to spring at the corner of my eye and a twinge to rattle my aching body. Only moaning seems to take my mind off the pain, but I can't breathe in enough air to continue moaning for as long as I'd like. Heavy footsteps echo through the floor, growing louder as they approach me slowly. I can't find the strength to peel open one eye to see whose memory Xemnas must've used this time…but I have a pretty good idea already.
"Compromise isn't selfish, hm?" The deep voice chuckles sardonically. "While it might not be selfish, it certainly didn't do you a whole lot of good, did it?"
My jaw tightens and I mentally scream for the pain to leave me. How can I hope to fight the memory of Lexaeus when I'm battered and beaten to within an inch of my life?
A pair of emerald green eyes flashes in my head. "Fight with your will to protect and to restore."
Aerith's words somehow soothe the ache in my body and sharpen my senses. Her face—and the faces of my friends—ignite a warmth in my chest that I hope isn't really blood seeping from a punctured organ. I have to fight for them.
"Do you regret giving us Nobodies our hearts?" he asks quietly. "Do you regret giving me a heart?"
The memories of Zexion and Vexen's countless hours of study and research and Marluxia's patient coaxing in a garden of red roses and Larxene's triumphant cackling after beating the latest group of monsters and Luxord's endless winning streaks and Xaldin and Lexaeus' labor with the reconstruction and Saix's content gazes at the moon and Xigbar's gleeful target practice and Demyx's guitar-playing in a seaside café and Axel's carefree smirk flood my mind. "No…" I barely whisper.
"You don't?" I can hear him arching an eyebrow skeptically. "So if you could do everything over again from the beginning, you would still toil restlessly to find a way to give us Nobodies our hearts, even if you knew your own would be stripped away by me? Even if you knew you'd die trying to get it back?"
I can hardly feel the pain anymore as I open my eyes and look directly into his blue ones, saying clearly: "Yes."
Lexaeus' face glares down at me, the wrinkles in his brow deep. "Foolish."
With a little effort I push myself onto my feet, bracing myself against a nearby pillar and gripping my katana. "Foolish? You think that's foolish of me?" The corners of my mouth pull back into a smile. "Then I've already won."
Author's Afterthought: After pressing the replay button on my stereo to listen to Imogen Heap's Have You Got It in You? and after watching videos of Kingdom Hearts II gameplay against Xigbar and Lexaeus, this is what I came up with. Please leave a review! Thank you for reading!
